“My God,” he said. “I am so stupid.”
“Are you all right?” enquired Crane, cautiously.
Stephen licked his lips. “I’ve seen him before.”
“Well, you’ve seen me,” said Crane. “And the resemblance is quite strong.”
“No. I’ve seen that picture. Or rather, a reproduction, an engraving.” Stephen shook his head, incredulous. “You said he was the first Earl Crane. So, before that, your family title was Fortunegate?”
“It was. And still is, actually. I’m Viscount Fortunegate too.” Stephen couldn’t find words for that. Crane contemplated him with amusement. “I wish I’d known that would give you so much pleasure. I’d have saved it for a special occasion.”
“You’re Lord Fortunegate. Your ancestor was Lord Fortunegate.”
“That’s how it works. Are you going to tell me why you care?”
Stephen indicated the painting. It was a large gilt-framed oil work showing a man whose lean build and patrician features gave him a distinct resemblance to the current Lord Crane. His long-fingered hand rested on a window ledge on which, inevitably, a magpie perched, adorned with a carved gold ring on which the painter had lavished detail. More magpies flew in the background of the painting, which showed Piper in well-kept days. It looked gracious, spacious, elegant. A table in the foreground was covered in handwritten papers. The first earl looked out at them with a slight smile on his face.
“That man,” Stephen said, “your ancestor, Lord Fortunegate…he was a magician. Specifically, he was one of the most powerful magicians this country has ever known. He…good God, he invented modern practice, he shaped our society as it stands today. His book of theory—that picture’s in the frontispiece—”
“Wait.” Crane had a hand up. “Stop. My great-great-etcetera grandfather was—like you?”
“I wish I was like him,” Stephen said. “He was one of the great practitioners and the great lawmakers.”
Crane stared at the painting. “Well, that’s something I didn’t expect. Is it hereditary?”
“Talent? A bit. You get family lines sometimes, but rather crooked ones. My aunt’s a witch, for example.” Stephen glanced at Crane. “But there’s obviously something come down in the blood. Do you know how most people refer to him, the name he used?”
“Go on.”
“He was the Magpie Lord. And, of course, that explains the magpie compulsion.”
“The what?”
Stephen strolled down the length of the gallery, looking at the older paintings. “These go back a while. And not a magpie in any of them. I wonder if the Magpie Lord renamed the house?”
“I could probably find out. So?”
“So since the Magpie Lord, you’ve all been frantically filling the house with magpies. Carvings and cutlery and appalling porcelain…”
“It’s the family symbol.”
“Look at the paintings. It wasn’t the family symbol before the Magpie Lord. Did you never wonder why a family titled Crane would use a magpie for a symbol?”
“It occurred to me fairly forcibly when I had my tattoos,” Crane said. “Unlike magpies, cranes are common in China. And a lot easier to ink.”
Stephen shook his head. “You hate your family. You loathe this house. You were five thousand miles away and never coming back. You could have chosen any design you liked. And you still felt compelled to etch magpies into approximately a quarter of your skin.”
“It was a whim.” Crane sounded slightly defensive.
“How long did it take, start to finish?”
“Three years or so, but—”
“Quite a whim. I bet they hurt, too.”
“I chose to have my tattoos,” said Crane, with a flare of anger that took Stephen by surprise. “I chose them. I don’t know what you’re suggesting but I didn’t get them done at the command of some long-dead warlock—”
“He was not a warlock!”
The words rang off the gallery walls. Stephen didn’t care. “The Magpie Lord was one of the greatest figures of our history. He was utterly intolerant of abuse of power. He was one of the legislators who codified the law on practitioners, establishing just how we govern ourselves, specifically to prevent warlocks hurting the innocent. And magpies were a key part of his power in some way that I don’t pretend to understand, and the people who carry his bloodline and live in his house have been picking up that resonance for two hundred years after his death, and I think your choice to have those tattoos was driven by that resonance, and frankly I would be proud to be touched by the Magpie Lord, even so remotely. Is that clearer?”
Crane was leaning against the wall, watching him. His eyes dwelled appreciatively on Stephen’s face. They no longer looked angry, but amused, and held a distinct touch of speculation.
Stephen took a deep breath. “And you have no idea what I’m talking about and don’t know what a warlock is,” he continued, in a more normal voice. “Sorry. I’m rather an admirer of his, that’s all.”
And the atmosphere of Piper was nagging at him, draining, dry, oppressive, like a constant itch behind the eyes.
Crane’s lips curled. He was still watching Stephen’s face. Maybe in China one could keep staring at another person for a long time and it wouldn’t seem out of place, Stephen thought. He could feel the colour rising in his cheeks, and he suddenly wished he’d found out more before coming here: why Lucien Vaudrey had been thrown out by his father, and exactly what the whispers of scandal surrounding his name were.
Crane was still watching him, with that lazy, speculative smile broadening on his tanned, aristocratic, handsome face, and Stephen realised that he was watching him right back, staring at the man like an idiot girl.
Oh, no. Absolutely not. Don’t even think about it.
He turned abruptly, looking back up the gallery, and glimpsed Hector Vaudrey’s painted face. “I’ll go to the library now,” he said, making his voice neutral. “This is a wonderful discovery, and I would very much like to find out more, later, but it’s not relevant to the immediate problem of the Judas jack.”
As he spoke, he headed back the way they had come. Crane caught up after a few steps and led the way down the stairs.
“It’s down here. Will you want me in there?”
“Actually, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay well away till I give you the word. Can you go and be with Mr. Merrick while I do this, just in case?”
“In case?” Crane frowned. “Is that standard professional caution, or are you concerned about something?”
“I don’t know yet,” Stephen said. “I’ll go and find out.”
Chapter Seven
Crane watched the heavy panelled door close behind Day. He’d seen the man brace himself before going in, registered the expression of distaste on his face, wondered what strange sensitivities were being triggered.
Crane was not so much a brave man as an obstinate one. He had endured experiences that made him nauseous with remembered fear or pain when he looked back at them, because at the time it never seemed possible to back down. He would not have backed down now. But he was extremely glad that Day hadn’t asked him to go in the library.
An odd little man, that. Too thin, too pale, but his sharp features were appealing, and when his tawny eyes had been lit by animation, he had suddenly seemed very striking indeed. Passion would definitely improve Stephen Day, Crane thought.
Not one to pursue, though, despite a moment’s temptation back in the gallery. The man seemed to be living on his nerves, tense and twitchy, and Crane needed him to do his job. And that momentary flash of rabbit-in-a-snare panic in his eyes suggested inexperience, and it had been a long time since Crane had found that anything more than a chore. Still…
He put the thought aside for consideration and wandered off to find Merrick, who was in the master bedroom, attending to the unpacking.
“What’s going on?” Crane enquired in Shanghainese. Graham was a chronic eavesdropper, so they avoided English fo
r even the most trivial conversations, mostly to annoy.
“Nothing’s going on, this is the countryside. Where’s the shaman?”
“Library,” said Crane, seating himself on the edge of the ancient, eternally damp four-poster. “Doing shaman things. Guess what I just learned about my honourable ancestors.”
He gave Merrick a highly coloured account of the revelations about the first Earl Crane. Merrick stopped folding shirts and propped himself against the chest of drawers to listen. “Well, there you are,” he said at last. “What’s it all mean, then?”
“No idea. Nothing probably, but it made the shaman happy for a brief moment. Where have you put him?”
“Peony Room.” Merrick returned his attention to the shirts, which he continued to straighten in the silence that followed, ignoring Crane’s folded arms and raised eyebrow.
“Peony Room,” said Crane, since Merrick wasn’t rising to it. “The old man won, did he?”
“I let him win. Seemed like a good idea.”
“Because?”
“Because it puts the shaman next to you at night, with a connecting door, not down the other end of a corridor, out of earshot.”
Crane glared at him. “And if the old bastard goes round telling everyone that the shaman is here to keep my bed warm?”
“That’s the shaman’s problem.” Merrick slammed a drawer shut. “He’s here to keep you safe. If he doesn’t like it…”
“If the blood-covered sorcerer who can bend metal by looking at it doesn’t like it,” Crane said, “then what, exactly?”
There was a triple rap at the half-open door. Merrick’s eyes flicked over, and his face set. Crane sighed silently.
“Come in, Mrs. Mitching.”
Piper’s housekeeper was a grim-faced woman in her early forties, who tackled everything with an air of humourless irritation. Crane approved of her, since she made no secret of her contempt for his father and brother, and she returned his approval because, whatever people said about him, he kept his hands off her girls.
Crane loathed servant-hall politics as much as any other kind, but he made sure there was no trace of boredom or irritation in his voice as he enquired what he could do for her.
Mrs. Mitching hesitated, which was unusual. “Well. My lord. Well, I wouldn’t bring this to you, but… Graham says it’s nonsense, but he hasn’t looked or listened and… My girls aren’t stupid, my lord. Elsa Brook might not be book-learned and she has fancies but she’s no fool. And the fact is, it won’t do, and we don’t have to put up with it, and we won’t.”
“Then you shan’t,” said Crane promptly. “Can you tell me what it is you won’t put up with, and perhaps I can help?”
Mrs. Mitching bit her lip. “The fact is, my lord… I wouldn’t say anything—with all said and done, I don’t want to speak ill—but Elsa Brook and Jane Diver both… I saw it myself, my lord. There’s no getting away from it. I saw it.”
“What did you see?” said Crane, as patiently as possible.
Mrs. Mitching took a deep breath. “Mr. Hector, my lord. We’ve all seen Mr. Hector.”
“You’ve seen Mr. Hector,” Crane repeated.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Mr. Hector, who is dead.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Mrs. Mitching. “And that’s not all of it.”
In the library, Stephen blinked and stretched and flexed his aching hands as he brought his attention back from the etheric flow, such as it was, and into the world again. His head hurt, he was extremely cold, and he was painfully hungry, which came as no surprise, given how lifeless the house was. The etheric currents that he normally drew from without thinking were shallow trickles here.
How had such a lifeless house been the Magpie Lord’s home? Or perhaps that was why it was lifeless, perhaps he’d drained it in some way.
He stared at his knucklebones, white under the skin, and the image of mummies popped into his head again, irritatingly. This house wasn’t a dead thing moving, it was a live thing dying. Or perhaps the image simply meant the shrivelled corpse of something once powerful.
He rose from his crouching position on the floor and looked round the room as he rolled his shoulders. It should have been a lovely place, a double-height room with dark wood shelving, filled with books, many leather-bound and ancient. He should have been consumed with excitement at the idea that somewhere in there might be the Magpie Lord’s own books.
But the room was dusty and loveless and lifeless, and filled with the ivy stink of the Judas jack, and the echoes of two men’s desperate, self-hating, lonely deaths, and the very recent shadows of Crane’s fear and pain, and it made his hands hurt.
“The blazes with this,” he muttered to himself, and headed for the door, which he pulled open only to be confronted with a raised fist on the other side.
“Oh, there you are, I was just about to knock,” said Crane brightly. “I have a fascinating story for you.”
Crane sat back in an uncomfortably embroidered chair and watched the show with interest.
Mrs. Mitching had been extremely reluctant to repeat her story to Day, despite Crane’s assurances that he could, in some unspecified way, shed light on the mystery. But she had produced a pot of tea and a plate of heavy, wet cake and solid, indigestible buns, and to Crane’s frank astonishment Day had devoured two slices of cake and three buns with enthusiasm that had worked better than any flattery, as well as obviously genuine interest in her tale, and now Mrs. Mitching was as close to relaxing as anyone so rigid ever could.
“So let me be sure I understand,” Day said. “All the…incidents happened in the Rose Walk. You and Miss Diver saw him from a distance, seeming to rage and hit out at something.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“And he came up to Miss Brook and spoke to her. Shouted at her.”
“But she couldn’t hear a word, just saw his mouth moving.”
“And when she ran, he chased her to the edge of the Rose Walk…”
“And grabbed at her dress, sir, she says. She swears it was him clutching at her skirts, and that the grip came loose as she stepped off the end of the Rose Walk onto the paved path. With all the rose bushes along there, it’s no surprise to me if something did catch at her skirt, and it’s no surprise what she’d think either, the way that man carried on—begging your pardon, my lord.”
“Not at all.”
“Had he, ah, chased Miss Brook in life?” asked Day. “Or is there any reason why she might feel pursued when you and Miss Diver didn’t?”
“Elsa Brook is imaginative,” said Mrs. Mitching, much as she might have said, Elsa Brook is leprous. “She does her job well and she’s no trouble but she has fancies.”
“Do you think this was a fancy?” Day asked seriously.
Mrs. Mitching hesitated. “Maybe, sir. I know what I saw, and Jane Diver isn’t imaginative, and I wouldn’t blame Brook that she was frit after what she saw, or that she feared something was coming after her…”
Day’s tawny eyes were fixed on Mrs. Mitching’s face. “But?” he asked softly.
Silence. At last she spoke, in an unwilling rush. “You couldn’t trust Mr. Hector in life, and I don’t trust him in death either, and that’s the truth, sir. And none of my girls are going into the Rose Walk again.”
Day leaned back. “That’s probably wise.”
“What do you think sir?” demanded Mrs. Mitching. “Is it really Mr. Hector? My lord says as you know about these things.”
“I explained that you’ve come across some odd things in the course of your work,” Crane put in, as Day’s eyes flicked to him.
“I have,” Day agreed. “Learned opinion holds that hauntings are just…shadows, like visible echoes, important or terrible events being played out again and again, without substance, like Chinese lantern shows. Very frightening, very uncomfortable for you, but not dangerous. Just a ripple in time, a meaningless repetition that will ebb away.”
His voice was soothing. Mrs.
Mitching nodded slowly. “A ripple in time,” she repeated. “Well, I never.”
“If I had to guess,” Day added, “I’d say that Miss Brook might well have reacted to a very frightening experience with understandable panic. As you say, clothes do catch on rose bushes. I shouldn’t think it at all likely that there is anything to pose a danger to anyone. That said, you should still keep your staff away from the Rose Walk. These things seem to become more…fixed if people see them and believe in them, and I don’t suppose Lord Crane wants to be haunted by the image of his late brother.”
“In that, you are correct. The Rose Walk is out of bounds as of this moment.” Crane tapped a finger on the table for emphasis. “Nobody sets foot there on pain of dismissal. Please advise your staff, Mrs. Mitching, and I’ll tell Merrick to pass the word.”
He ushered the housekeeper out with thanks for her loyalty. The door shut behind her. Both men were silent for a few seconds as her footsteps moved away.
Crane said softly, “Anything in it?”
Day was rubbing his hands together, pulling at the joints. “I’m afraid there may be. She’s totally earthbound—that is, she’s not someone I would expect to pick up the kind of currents and images I talked about. And she believed what she said. She and Miss Diver saw something, the sensitive Miss Brook experienced something much stronger and more menacing. And possibly physical.”
“You don’t think Brook just caught her skirt on a rose bush?”
“I hope she did,” said Day grimly. “If she didn’t, you have a very serious problem. I’m wondering if this is the source of what’s so badly wrong in this house.”
“So when you said there was no danger…”
“That may have been true. Or it may not.”
The trader in Crane made a mental note that Day was a fluent and unrepentant liar, even as he picked at a loose thread on one of the embroidered chairs with the edge of a fingernail. “Is it your professional opinion that the ghost of my brother attempted to rape my housemaid? Is that actually possible?”
The Magpie Lord Page 5